


break me down (build me up again)

by parareve



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: (the answer is yes. repeatedly.), /screams internally, /sips oatmilk cappuccino, D/s undertones, Husbands in love, M/M, Rough Sex, That's it, Top Kurogane with a capital T, aka: fai getting wrecked for 6k straight, did i die while editing this?, gratuitous filth, i am in some (/many) ways ashamed, that's the fic, this is so horny oh my GOD, who are tooth-rottingly sweet with each other and sinful as all hell in turns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:40:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26736766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parareve/pseuds/parareve
Summary: Hot tea andWelcome home’sare carried out in swift procession, and it is after they have been left alone,properly(Fai swatting away half-hidden smiles and winking eyes from his nest of discarded wools with quiet demands that dinner be leftoutside, please) that silence fills the breath between the fire’s whisperings. In that quiet, he watches the flame’s light dance upon a silhouette more beast than man, each step a silent stride over the tatami where satchels and scrolls and daggers and sword-sheath are rustled free to find temporary homes upon the furniture; swallows down the anticipation that shivers gently in his bones, fingers toying with the fabric’s fraying.“Well?” he breathes, at last.Kurogane turns only slight over his shoulder. The light barely touches his face. “Well?”
Relationships: Fay D. Fluorite/Kurogane
Kudos: 62





	break me down (build me up again)

**Author's Note:**

> ~~this is the horniest thing i've ever written i'm so sorry~~
> 
> (In actual noting: this is a direct continuation of an [earlier ficlet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/57210205) from my short story series, which, though loosely referenced here, does not need to be read beforehand for this to make sense. The word count completely tore away from me, so adding this there seemed to feel a little out of place.
> 
> In not-actual noting: send immediate aid.)

Fai is no faint-hearted fool to spend his nights bundled upon their terrace and watching the moon’s silver grow cold, clinging to the small-fluttered hope that Kurogane may return early (for he rarely does—enough years had proved a promise made, a promise kept, and rarer still were the days he avoided any promising, at all)—and Fai is _certainly_ no bemoaning twat to leap at the chance for a _surprise_ , of all things (the rarest feat of any)—so with each passing star-rise, he squashes any disappointments for a solstice spent alone, and forgets, much as he can, the prospect of Kurogane returning, entirely.

As such, it’s only natural that when on a night with wind hissing through the branches and sky blackened with storm comes the heavy clumping of footsteps upon the panelling, Fai thinks nothing of it.

Coiled in a tide of winter wools, he sits toad-like by their great room’s irori, attention thinning by the minute. (Finances had _never_ been his field of interest—the farthest possible from it, in fact—and any distraction had come as a welcome guest as the night dragged on. By this hour, he would gather he had around six of them sharing tea.) Even so, those could-bes of treading heels come fleeting as the flames: the hearth’s light flickers, a small inclination to _Get up, go see_ that whispers past his temples, dances at the twitch of his fingers—but it is not the first time he has found himself glancing over his shoulder, inkbrush frozen and breath tangled in the quietest hopes that maybe, _maybe_ : so he ticks his nail upon the stem; frowns gently at the temptation, nonetheless; scolds it back into the corner among the (now seven-and-counting) other chittering nuisances, and scowls.

There’s no reason for him to expect _any_ of it—so when the door to their foyer spills open to a tide of frost, blustering far enough through the hall for him to catch sight of it even from where he is sat, it’s all he can do to keep from making an inked abstract of the tatami and slipping face-first into the ashes.

The blur of sensation that follows is nauseating: the bloodbond within his chest strung tight as cello strings, humming and alive against the taste of an aura blue as an untouched tide, earthen and electric with healer’s magic and dragonblood both; warmth washing over him from heel to nape, a hushed spark of new-flame that catapults him to his feet before he can even right himself proper.

It’s a mess of a thing, all squeaking steps and tumbling toes, when his coverlet sweeps from his shoulders to snare at his heels—a mess and a _performance_ , apparently, given the onslaught of baffled blinking that peer out from slow-opened screens (and if he had any pride left in him, he’d have hissed at their hallservants to mind their damn business and _leave him be_ , thank you very much)—but any embarrassment renders itself useless, his heart hammering too quick to think: for at the end of the hall, snow haloed upon the bundled silhouette of wild hair and strong shoulders, stands Kurogane.

(He considers, briefly, the acceptable response one should take upon finding themselves welcoming home a travel-wearied lord—a response several of their aforementioned bafflers had taken intelligently upon themselves to do, scrambling beneath hissed delegations for warm broth and linens and tea—but the hesitation is short-lived.)

Tangled through the bind of clinging fabric still, Fai manages to find his footing: crosses eight strides worth of polished wood in four: leaps upon his toes from their genkan's threshold to latch his fingers through the snow-dampened quilting over that broad back, before any greeting can be given between them—and the weight of warm palms that catch (steady and sure and _strong_ ) about his waist takes little time at all to sweep him clear off his feet.

A laugh huffs against his temple, and into his hair, Kurogane smirks; grouses, “Can’t even get my shoes off, first?” with a grain of smugness Fai can do nothing but fall breathless to.

“You weren’t supposed to be back for another _week,_ ” is all he manages, once he’s slipped back to his heels. Little has changed in the man before him, weathered as he is: winter cottons fall in frosted sweeps from the mantle of his shoulders, raven fringe sticking damp and frazzled about his temples, only a kiss of a flush on dark skin. He’s due for a shave, the peppering of scruff tickling against Fai’s cheek even as he pulls away—a sensation still too new to know cleanly, but one that sends Fai’s smile widening, nonetheless. His hands make quick work of dusting the sleet from cloaked shoulders, mouth puffed into a mock-pout. “You’re _freezing_ , Kuro-sama.”

“Sayin’ it’s cold out there?” quips Kurogane, and the glare Fai shoots him sends the curl of those dusk (and full, and a little chapped, and _beautiful_ ) lips crooking further. One heavy palm raises, squeezed gentle around the slope from pale nape to silk-draped shoulder, and for all the damp cold of his sleeve prickles against Fai’s skin, the heat of his touch leaves him quivering. “Let me get all this shit off,” Kurogane grumbles on, shrugging one shoulder out of his hanten already. His smirk turns to a wry thing, one dark brow twitching. “Don’t have to hold me down, Mage; m’not goin’ anywhere.” 

A flush raises high upon Fai’s skin, bright as field-poppies. He jerks his eyes away, perching into a mess of folded arms and scuffling toes. “W-Well, _good_ ,” he huffs, a touch petulant. That heavy hand lingers, a slow-burned brand upon his collar once other sleeve is tugged free and thick layers stripped down. “I’m starting to think Tomoyo-hime is missing you too much, calling you away every month—I might just have to have a word with her.”

Kurogane snorts, bending down to tug at the laces of his boots. “She’d smack you upside the head,” he mulls. “Or stick _you_ in that palace, for a month.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t _dare_ ,” Fai gasps, aghast. A wrinkle twitches in one cheek, mirrored slow through another low scoff before him. “I think your royal councilmen have had _quite_ enough of me, already.”

One boot clumps to the stone beneath, then the other—and up the small step to the hall’s flooring Kurogane rises, a tilt put in Fai’s neck even on fair footing. “Heh,” he breathes, and the bloody stare that flicks to Fai’s own gleams with nothing but pride, sharp and lethal though it is. “Old bastards need _more_ of it: finally got enough sense to keep their mouths shut.”

“ _Kuro-sama_.” Fai’s grin scrunches oddly where he fights to keep its edges dampened. He loses the battle with it, eventually; allows a soft-sewn shiver against the warmth of eyes bright as embers and deep as mulled wine that chase him from ankle to ear.

Kurogane’s fingers lay upon his shoulder still, sliding just so to toy with the hemming of his neckline. Only once he’s turned to look past the blush that flames all the brighter upon fair ears, scanning a hall whose prying eyes have scuttled quick away beneath the _snap_ of shoji pulled shut, does his palm raise: he cups the slant of Fai’s jaw, brushes a roughened thumb over the fringe that scatters pale as moonbeams about pinked cheeks; bends down to catch the startle of quick-blinked blue through lashes dark as coal, before turning further still—and the kiss lands chastely: soft as bee’s wings, and searing as a fire’s touch, a slow thing to deepen.

Surprise curls through Fai’s toes, melts his legs useless, a lulling breath swallowed quick as it comes. Against the disassemblage of his bones, calloused fingers and weathered palm squeeze a burning tether: begin the careful process of stringing him back together, with past-learned ease.

“Kuro-sama,” Fai whispers again, dazed and doe-eyed in the aftermath. A space parts between them, only enough to share a breath. The sharp tip of Kurogane’s nose brushes his own, a gentle nudge, and against its touch, Fai’s cheeks _flame_ : hands finding the heavy silks of indigo-dyed kimono, unable to resist an aimless splaying into countless layers of heat, curling tight where a pulse pounds steady and sure. Breath fans hot against his mouth, catches between a second kiss, light as it is lingering—and this time Fai cannot hold back the sound that aches from his teeth, can hardly hold himself upright.

“Don’t make me stand here all night,” Kurogane growls then, mouth slanting at one side. Midnight lashes raise again, and the warmth of his hand falls: fingers a slow curl through the spun gold at Fai’s nape, thumb a gentle tracking down the flutter of his pulse. “Got somethin’ I wanna give you.”

“Oh?” Fai sighs. Kurogane’s mouth twitches wider, a low hum. “ _Oh_ ,” Fai says again, hands fretting; blushes pink down his neck, yanks disobedient fingers to his hover at his sides. “Yes. Right. Inside, _right_ —well, it _is_ your fault, you know, having us stand here—”

“ _Move_ ,” huffs Kurogane, already doing so himself, knee nudging into the side of one lean thigh for good measure—and Fai, spine jolted into a sharp-tongued fluster, does: fumbles along the return-path to the crackling welcome of their hearth with babbled _I’m going, I’m going!’s_ and flushed ears. In his lead, Kurogane follows, quietly bemused; gathers the discarded wreckage of coverlets strung along the floor with absentminded ease, each slung heavily over one shoulder to form a lopsided heap (and, upon seeing a kettle of liquor warming over the flames, deposits them, just as thoughtlessly, into unsuspecting arms).

Hot tea and _Welcome home’s_ are carried out in swift procession, and it is after they have been left alone, _properly_ (Fai swatting away half-hidden smiles and winking eyes from his nest of discarded wools with quiet demands that dinner be left _outside_ , please) that silence fills the breath between the fire’s whisperings. In that quiet, he watches the light dance upon a silhouette more beast than man, each step a silent stride over the tatami where satchels and scrolls and daggers and sword-sheath are rustled free to find temporary homes upon the furniture; swallows down the anticipation that shivers gently in his bones, fingers toying with the fabric’s fraying.

“Well?” he breathes, at last.

Kurogane turns only slight over his shoulder. The light barely touches his face. “Well?”

Fai throws his brows to the heavens, then blinks, then furrows them. “ _Well_?” he huffs again, wholly unamused. “You make a great big show of gifts, and whatnot—”

“Never said anything about a gift,” muses Kurogane, turning fully. Fai splutters like an old engine. “All I _said_ ,” he continues, moving slow to cross the long stretch between them, “was I had something I wanted to give you.”

“Which, by _implication_ ,” Fai argues, with great enunciation, “would mean you have a _gift_. At least, that’s what most would _infer_ ,” and in place of further point-making, finds himself abruptly distracted: the tatami glossing beneath the weight of one heavy step, and then another; the shadow of draping fabric fanning strange and winglike through the lowlight. “ _And_ ,” Fai stumbles on, swallowing clumsily, “not that—not that I’m _expecting_ , or—” And here his words catch again: his eyes as lost as the breath of them as he stares stupidly at tabi that hush to stillness just before his knees, climbing up every layer of looming silk to watch one roughened hand raise, the light melting down the edge of tilting wrist, raised tendon, falling sleeve.

“Or?” Kurogane prods, a low murmur. His hand turns further: slips beneath the gloss of parting fabric just above his sternum, a muted hush on dark skin. 

“ _Or_ ,” Fai forces out, breathless, and fumes, “not that I—not that I _care_ , frankly, if you _don’t_ —you know what, you brute, don’t even bother to—” His words catch on a squeak, sudden, shoulders pitching, when that broad body lowers: one pleated knee briefly catching his own where it sinks to the matting, then the other. Fai’s mouth wrinkles, brain properly short-circuited. “To—to, um—”

“Give me your hand.”

His lungs flutter. “ _Well_ —if you were going to propose, you could have just said so—”

“Your _hand_ , idiot,” Kurogane grates, eyes briefly raising into a singe of ember, and Fai starts: sticks his fingers out clumsily from the cover of his wools with mouth scowling and skin glowing, caught in a careful snare of roughened palm, calloused thumb. Kurogane turns that fair hand upward; pulls his own free from the inner pocket of his robe to lay a warm block of violet canvas within it.

Fai looks down, brow prickled. “What’s…?” His fingers barely brush the edges of it before he _knows_ , as instantaneous as the first jolt of his blood bound to another—they stutter upon the binding, pull the cover open to freeze upon weathered ricepaper. “Kuro-sama,” he blurts, “these are _spells_ —”

“Overheard the palace archivists talking about them.” Kurogane’s fingers linger beneath his own; trace briefly along the valleys of knuckle and bone, fall slow to silk-draped knee instead. “Figured they’d be better use to you.”

“ _Ancient_ spells,” Fai babbles on, only half-registering; traces scarred fingertips gingerly down the ink of one page, flipping in eager awe to quiver over another. “ _How_ did you—gods above, I don’t even know where to _start_ —”

Kurogane scratches briefly over the side of his neck, one brow raising. “Eh, wasn’t hard to swipe it. Not like they guard the old texts much, anymore.”

“—I’ll have to dig out those linguistic scrolls Tomoyo gave—” Silence snaps between them, sudden as a thunderstrike, and up Fai’s eyes fly. Against the firelight, they burn golden-blue. “You didn’t,” he says carefully, half in disdain, and half in something frighteningly close to veneration. Kurogane’s fingers flutter over Fai’s knee; raises his other brow, mouth twitching at a curl. “You _didn’t_ ,” Fai gasps again.

“I was as much thief as I was assassin, Mage,” Kurogane says plainly, as though that justified any of it. His eyes flick up, blackish in the shadow.

Fai swallows again. “Still _are_ , apparently,” he snips, and at that, Kurogane grins fully: runs his thumb over his knee again, toying faint with the edge of his robe. Fai’s breath stutters like a man drowned.

“That such a bad thing?” Kurogane murmurs, humored still, but the counter comes as only a half-minded thing. A crease mars his brow briefly, eyes simmering and thoughtful. For a long moment, he falls silent. “Not what you were expecting, was it?” he realizes—rasps, more like: each word ground to gravel in a deduction that offers as much as it does threatens. The pad of his thumb slips lower: wanders just beneath the hemming of warm silk to brush against milky skin.

Fai nearly drops the text. His fingers snare upon it like a fish caught from water. “I—I— _what_?” he splutters, sent into a new degree of fuchsia. His knee shivers with a tremble clear through to his spine. “I don’t—I, _ah_ —” And up Kurogane’s fingers venture further—a slow depression: thumb, then forefinger, then palm; a searing touch that glides beneath hissing silk like a second skin.

“You’re not _subtle_ ,” Kurogane says, husky and low, and Fai all but chokes; pants out, “Well, _you_ certainly aren’t, either,” with breath stolen and bones quivering. The spellbook is clung to like a lifeline rapidly on the fringes of release. (Kurogane assesses any accusations that could be made for _that_ , easily enough: has enough sense of mind to tug the text away and send it skittering across the matting, much to the despair of Fai’s ever-depleting lung capacity). “ _Careful_ ,” he hisses—tries to, at least—but then there is a heavy palm planting an anchor amongst the tide of wools strewn at his side, and the fingers at his thigh smoothing higher, the part of his robe slithering over the heat of that dark wrist to bare knee and ankle and curling toe—and by then, Fai can only manage a half-formed, “Oh—”

There is no space for air, rapidly—tilting temple and tickling fringe and grappling fingers and snared silk—and by the time Kurogane’s palm has found an uninterrupted path to the curve of Fai’s flank (thumb caught on the crease of his hip, the tremor of Fai’s breath laid against the part of his mouth like hymns to an altar), realization is as slow a thing as any to dawn.

“It’s the dead of winter,” Kurogane cofounds, eventually, any sense of chastising washed clean by the minute to something that coils beneath Fai’s bones, leaves his fingers numb in the face of it. “How the _hell_ are you walking around here in nothing but your skin—”

“Oh, for—because I— _because_ I’m _comfortable._ ” Breathlessness is traded for exasperation in an instant.

“ _Comfortable_ ,” echoes Kurogane, bluntly, grating darker still; squeezes his palm firmer over supple flesh, a slow tug that captures nearly the whole breadth of tensing muscle beneath. Into the tangle of wools upon the matting, his other palm splays wider: flattens, claws: gives way to the steady prowl of his shoulders, the hearth’s light only a distant horizon upon the silk that spills down his arms, the gloss of raven strands half-undone from their coil at his nape. “Explains you lugging around this heap of blankets every damn day—”

“Are you _really_ trying to berate me for something that, mind you,” grates Fai, lungs puffing quick despite himself, “has made your job _infinitely_ easier—” and can’t get out another word past that: for Kurogane pulls him closer still, with no effort at all—close enough to leave every strand of weaved straw a whispered slew of sins against grappling fingers; to send his knees knotted and his eyes dazed, tracking aimless from the spilling part of cornflower silk down the pinked panting of his breast, to the slow loosening of battle-roughened fingers over his hip; the drape of dark fabric over scar-speckled skin, falling apart by gravity alone.

Fai licks his lips. He tries to remember how to breathe; forces up his eyes to find himself cornered in the sights of a feral patience, the kind only earned by a killer who has spent enough time in the quiet before the strike to carve a home in it. (If there is anything Kurogane can do, and do _well_ , it is that, and that alone—Fai has seen it enough, in all their years of bitten lies and cat-and-mouse chases; has seen it beneath his own hands, challenges laid between the sweat of their skin like a game of cards, and one never too kindly relinquished.)

The firelight paints a fine haze over the curve of Kurogane’s jaw: kisses the muscle that flutters where his mouth parts, a barely-there huff, just a flash of teeth. In the shadow, his eyes are obsidian. “Nothing,” he starts, measured and even. His hand shifts over ivory skin, a slow tracing of calloused fingers: bleeding out from the curve of Fai’s inner thigh, roughened sunspots that splay over the flat plain of his abdomen, peter soft at his belly, “makes my job _easier_ ,” and here his voice thickens: swoops as sudden as the blood that tingles from Fai’s fingertips when that heavy hand falls in a molten hush, strung down a path of choked breath and gold long since committed to memory. “I don’t _need_ it to—” And up Fai rises, like a man possessed: gasps, and grapples, fingers strung to a shaking tether on the drape of Kurogane’s collar: bunching sudden and messy at the silk that drums warm above his pulse, clawing to a tremble at his shoulder when a hand of synthetic skin and wired vein slides up his other thigh, slipping beneath the spill of his robes to pull him upright completely.

Fai melts, boneless and electric at once. His mind races, his lungs broken. It’s too much, after so long (too soft, too simple, too _good_ )—too much, to have him in his arms so suddenly—so it’s all he can do to cling: to nurture every impulse in dizzied indulgence, blooming open into the heat of those hands in a way that is nothing delicate.

“I missed you,” he breathes, light as a prayer, fingers tangling at the slopes of Kurogane’s shoulders; shivers into the slow bite of nails up his flank, gasping in the musk of pine oil and sweat and snow-damp cotton that sticks still on his collar. “I missed you,” Fai pants again, brow wrinkling against the heat of his neck. His hands scratch further: twist into the warm fabric at his back, slide into an aimless shudder upon his sternum, nails scraping faint at the valley of muscle beneath. “I missed you, so much—”

“I know,” Kurogane says, rolling low as thunder. His fingers play a familiar chord (slow, firm, soft, snaking); strike Fai’s breath to a stutter. His mouth catches on Fai’s jaw: follows the arch of his neck to breathe in the scent of incense and parchment caught in his hair, the taste of sage and ash on his skin. “Missed you, too—” and any further words are stolen, torn away in the wake of a desperate grace a common man would call filthy.

Fai’s nails sharpen, lace within the the folds of dark fabric and warm skin; breathes a knotted sigh into the slope of one strong shoulder, thighs a tangled quiver over the length of firm muscle beneath. “Please—come down, please—” His words hitch, rattle: crumble into mindless prayers where his back bends, hands carved to an inhuman snare on the parted curtain of Kurogane’s neckline, threads splitting. “Oh, I missed you so much—hurry up, _please_ —”

Kurogane’s teeth catch on the underside of his ear. His breath sears a burning path down the bared line of his nape, blue silk caught on the cusp of a pink shoulder. “You call _me_ impatient,” he growls; drinks in the pound of Fai’s pulse with mouth open and wandering. “Brat.” Fai’s shoulders flinch, panting wrenched to a thin thing; digs his nails firmer, shakes into the heavy anchor of calloused fingers that scratch, squeeze, slither.

“Don’t stop, don’t st— _ah_ —”

“Quiet.” It comes as only a whispered rumble itself, but the sound of it burrows into Fai’s being: plucks apart any sense of control strand by shaking strand.

Fai chokes on a swallow, muffles a gasp into smooth silk. His hands shake to small coils at the deadly swell of muscle that flutters through his right arm, the slope of his side. “I— _I_ —”

“Quiet,” Kurogane says again, softer still, and into the heat of his palm, the bite of his nails, Fai breaks: shudders, bends: builds higher and higher, like a ember from the ash, hands knotted to dead weights about the creases of dark fabric, before falling. He moves through the waves senselessly, in forced silence: mouth open, and breath stifled, templed into the nudge of Kurogane’s brow, the heat of his mouth on his cheek.

Fai swallows, brow wrinkling. His fingers loosen, shiver tight again. His robe slips in a quiet rush from his shoulder. “Kuro-sama,” he whispers. His lips are too dry.

That big hand moves, slowly; uncoils to a wet branding burn that falls, falls—

“Kuro-s _ah_ —”

“Wait,” breathes Kurogane, without having to be asked. Fai’s hands feather upon his shoulders, lungs puffing fast; swallows again, a kiss tucked to the hollow of his cheek, the shell of his ear. Rough fingers hush over his thigh: slip into the crease of his knee, a quiet anchor where muscle tenses, toes curl.

“I need,” Fai starts, too feverish to finish, “Ku—I _need_ —”

“I _know_ ,” and farther falls the splay of his other palm: fingers smoothed flat, curling up, “I said _wait_ ,” curling _in_ —

Fai’s breath gives out. His nails nearly cut the lay of Kurogane’s robe to shreds. “ _Oh_ ,” he stutters, held upright by a thread. Kurogane’s nails paint a gentle scrape along the inside of his knee: dip into the soft muscle that trembles just above. “I can’t,” Fai babbles, breathless, once the burn has faded; bobs into a helpless shiver, hands knotted up at the start of Kurogane’s back, “ _wait_ ,” and gasps again.

He gives up on holding himself up, entirely—slumps like sifting sand to the firm warmth of Kurogane’s chest, fingers clawing at his nape—and by then, Kurogane finally ( _finally_ ) submits: sweeps them horizontal with all the slow grace of a breeze through linen. The rough heat of his palm scratches over Fai’s knee, pale fingers knotted to the folds of fabric that spill open from his chest, tugging down, arching up—

“ _Please_ ,” Fai sighs, and through the glinting light of his fringe, his eyes are wild: clouded, foxlike: blue, and gold. His hands tug firmer, one dark shoulder bared to the flames in a silken hiss, hemming caught on the divots of muscle and vein. “I can’t wait,” and his voice is stretched thin, a final plea before the storm. His fingers tangle in the empty lay of Kurogane’s sleeve. “I _can’t_.”

Warm fingers press deeper; crook just so. “You keep talkin’ like that,” Kurogane says, only half-threatening; amusement flashes in his eyes as much want darkens them, “we’ll find out how long you can—”

“ _Kuro-sama_.” The words are nothing soft. Neither is the scratch of clawed fingers, vampire more than man: a sharp, stinging scrape that starts at the tense of his abdomen, latches to the ties of weathered hakama in a firm tether. Kurogane has to catch himself, only slightly—palm hushing sharp down the pink of Fai’s thigh, tangling sudden for balance in the sweep of fabric that follows. “ _Now_ ,” Fai finishes, barely human. His fingers slip free: drag instead down the breadth of muscle that slopes from hip to knee, too big to hold.

Bloody eyes raise, sharp as a blade. Against the firelight, his body burns hellish, demon-like. Silk spills further down dark skin like clipped wings. Beneath him quivers a fallen angel: the atonement welcomed with unsteady fingers, basking in the ashes of their descent with bated breath.

The world spins, suddenly; the light smothered (wool pillowing his cheek, tangled in his fingers, bunched beneath the shivery splay of his knees)—and he falls still as stone: lays with heart hammering as his robe makes a nest of itself upon the matting. It feels like hours, the time it takes for the ties at that dark waist to slide free. They kiss the small of Fai’s back, faint as butterflies; slip off in a hot-cold stripe.

Roughened knuckles brush the dimple in his hip, turn in a slow stroke of still-wet fingers to lay heavy between his shoulders. “Alright,” Kurogane grates then, any and all ultimatums forgotten. His palm smooths further: coils gentle into the ribbon-creased curls of golden hair, brushed slow from the curve of Fai’s nape, and Fai—

(trips on a swallow, heart wild still; glances back through the flyaways of his hair to catch a glimpse of trailing fingers and heavy palm, breath a slow smoking surge over the flat of his shoulder, the firelight glistening down every strand of black that spills from gold-kissed cheek, tickles sharp on pale skin—)

Fai can’t keep still.

He jolts in a small, unvoiced plea against the hand of metal bone and false blood that curls up from his thigh, dimples soft over his flank; buries the sound of something helpless and impatient into the wool, panted sudden and sharp where his head turns, his fingers grapple blind—

Teeth clip at the corner of his shoulder, the word _Quiet_ etched into his skin, without any sound, at all. Fai’s knees tremble. His belly puffs quick against the coverlets, toes curling.

“The only reason,” Kurogane starts, with a touch of a sigh, and his voice is grizzling, infinite, “I _ask_ ,” and the hand at Fai’s back falls. Rough fingers taper to slick points: trace the curve of Fai’s hip to slip wet and warm underneath, hitching around the joint of quivered bones. His sternum presses hot against Fai’s back with the puff of his breath; draws back, lingeringly, to an unraveling of straightened spine, close-hushed thighs, “is because of _them_ —” and the word breaks on a snarl, vicious and soft at once: simmers to ash with the hot heavy surge of their bodies melding to one.

The shockwave spills up Fai’s spine, crushes his breath to powder. Briefly, he sees stars; finds himself with gravity broken, lapsed into a new orbit.

“The _reason_ ,” he manages, voice scraped thin, once the concept of speech crawls its way back to him, “is tha— _ah_ —” and wavers: swallows down the breath snared behind his teeth, fingers scrunching aimless for some thread of clarity, something to keep him tied down to earth against the heat that curls ineludible upon him, blessedly unyielding. “Is,” he tries again, bowing into drunken confession, breath panting into the wool, “is that you’re too _shy_ —”

Kurogane’s nails grit gentle at his back. His breath hisses; shivers only slight. “The reason,” he says, throaty and low, “is that if I _don’t_ —” And Fai can barely stifle the sound that follows quick enough, frantic as a man pulled from water, when he finds himself thrown from gravity again. Kurogane’s words hitch; melt into a hum born from the belly of a beast. “ _You_ ,” he husks, after a moment, “won’t let me hear the end of it, once the gossip starts.”

Fai struggles to remember how to swallow. He blinks, tingling and dazed; slips back into the dark, just as easily. “As if that’s—stopped you, before,” he whispers. The hand at his back feathers, fans, curling absent through the dew that beads down his spine. His throat ripples, after the second try. “In fact,” he continues, faintly adamant, “if my memory serves me correctly, which—you should _remember_ , it—ah—usually _does_ —that’s been, if anything, more reason to— _encourage_ you—”

Fire sears within his belly, again: sends him into the black without any further rhyme or reason. He shakes. His knees spill open, further: leave his arms trembling where he arches into the only smothering weight of stability attainable: turns him dizzy with heat where burning skin brushes tacky to his back, swells slow upon the bow of his shoulders.

Kurogane lays a kiss along the damp of his nape. His breath burns through Fai’s skin, sets a fire clear to the center of his being. “Is that what you want?”

To string syllables together for anything resembling an answer poses itself as an insurmountable task, and so Fai, decidedly, doesn’t bother—caves instead to the instinct that claws blind and ravenous at his limbs, pinned between the coil of knotted fabric and the weight of the man that bears him down into it. Friction comes easily, a swift-fed temptation for stubborn, selfish release (and had he been in any wicked right of mind, he may have snatched the whispered sins of that offering and ran with it)—but it’s stolen away, soon as the meek startles of its pleasure are found.

A heavy hand curls upon his thigh: tugs with slow purpose to leave his knee skittering over the breadth of firm muscle beneath (pressing deeper, _deeper_ ), and against the gold of Fai’s nape, Kurogane’s mouth parts: sighs with the faintest shiver. (He’s grown momentarily distracted—or so Fai can only assume, fogged as his own mind is—but there is no space between them, the heat of their bodies a nauseous thing, too heavy and too _good—_ )

“Well?” The word singes straight to Fai’s bones, slow and soft as it’s growled. “Is it?”

He can’t think. His lungs tangle upon themselves. “Not up for the challenge?” he breathes back, steady as he can manage.

(A given tease, on any other day—one known to provoke vexed grumblings and rolling eyes, time halted for the sake of regained pride and point-keeping—but _now_ —

Now the air shifts: turns suffocating with anticipation, silent and still.)

Kurogane’s lips catch on the wisps of his hair. “Challenge?” he echoes. His tone is indecipherable: beastly, and bemused, and deliberating, all at once. (And, perhaps, a bit prideful, too.)

Fai would have snipped something back, at that. Fai, actually, would have said a lot of things ( _arrogant brute_ being the chiefest of them all)—but that ability is lost on him, abruptly: buried beneath the seven circles, past where the state of his mind has plummeted. The grit of fingers in his hair wrenches out another moan, listless and unashamed: paints shivers violent from his fingertips to his toes where he writhes, covers tangled beneath heaving chest and splaying knees, with the blinding burn of his bones being wrought to nothing.

The room blurs. Fai fingers whiten upon the wools, the only anchor given. He remembers to breathe, distantly: senseless murmurings that tumble into the fibers, flare to splintered notes. Sweat slips between their skin, beads to glitter at his nape. Sensation sparks electric beneath slow-tugged hair: turns to a numbing wash where rough fingers slide to a burning cradle about the side of his neck, thumb following the throb of his pulse to catch gentle on his jaw.

Fai’s head falls back. His vision goes white.

(Kisses on his shoulder, up the other side of his throat, laid like jewels between each rugged breath; nails scratching down his thigh, biting a perfect indentation, slipping on dewy skin to squeeze soft and splaying.)

He melts into the cradle of Kurogane’s palm, struck to a livewire. His breathing stutters.

(A sigh pressed to his jaw, lips twitching to let teeth catch. A sound follows, softer still, that slithers beneath Fai’s being: melts with the slow branding drag of open mouth, nudging temple, knitting brow to something hellish and tender. Fingers scrape at his waist; fumble with sudden urgency to snare within the strewn sea of forgotten kimono and quilting. The hand at his neck slips, shivers: clasps a searing hold on his shoulder.)

Fai is gone, before he can process the crash of it.

The shackling of his fingers fade to numbness. Heat blurs in his bones, strips all tension slow from him. He breathes in the must of sweat and ashes on warm cotton: turns into its dark with soft-filled lungs.

Kurogane’s breath is still hot on his shoulder. His body lays heavily, panting. He swallows, air sanded in his throat: loosens his fingers from the willow of Fai’s shoulder, strokes a half-minded circle through the dew that glistens on flushed skin.

“Fuck,” croaks Fai, after a long moment, the only intelligent sound amendable. Kurogane snorts. “ _Fuck_ , I missed you.”

“Mh.” It’s a slow thing, the process of working them apart. Kurogane lays close, still; brushes away the damp of Fai’s fringe with warm fingers, catches the curve of his hip where he turns.

Fai blinks. The disheveled sight of unbound hair and coal-smoked eyes is too much, almost—but Kurogane quirks one brow, chest puffing soft, the flame’s light prismed on glistening skin.

His teeth flash, briefly. “What?”

Fai sinks further into his elbow; bobs his knee, lashes flicking. “What was that you said, about gossip?” he muses, after a moment. His mouth splits to a grin, stumbles over a snicker. “Ah—just to, um. To clarify.” He bites his lip, smirking impish again.

Kurogane’s thumb tacks over the crease of his hip. “ _You_ asked for it,” he scoffs, before any bickering can be raised between them. “So don’t come bitching to me about it.”

“And what about your little trainees, laughing away in the morning?” Fai teases, tilting his head. “Surely you’ll have an earful, too—”

“I don’t have any _shame_ , Mage.” And Kurogane purrs it, lionish: turns to nuzzle the lazy curl of its breath against a still-pinked shoulder; nips a gentle peck down the ripple of his throat.

Fai shivers, hums. “Mh—thank the _gods_ you don’t,” he sighs, and curls up further: nestles into the warm damp of heavy silks long discarded from the length of Kurogane’s back. “Get me some tea, will you?” he murmurs, a touch drowsily. “And— _oh_ , the book—I forgot—” And easily as that, finds himself alight again: clings to the flex of dark muscle where Kurogane’s arm shifts slow to attention, fingers pawing along the matting. “Let me _see_ —”

“Y’already looked at it,” Kurogane mutters, brow twitching and amused. Canvas stipples across the weave.

“Yes, _yes—_ but I didn’t really have a good chance, you know; you are _very_ distracting—”

The book blocks his vision. Kurogane taps its spine upon his brow: lets it drop into quick-snatched fingers. “Get the tea, yourself,” he rumbles, and laxes, sinking into the lay of one arm, cheek pillowed on his palm. He clears his throat, blinks slowly. “And liquor.”

Fai’s magic makes quick work of that, an easy charm as any, and the clink of their cups barely bats a lash where he turns to lay within the crook of Kurogane’s shoulder. Parchment scratches faint against the dark hollow of his sternum. A rough palm brushes along the crook of Fai’s knee: slips down the line of it to lay in soft-minded patterns along his navel.

“Priestmagic,” Fai mumbles, after a moment, “and blessing charms—I’ve never touched _anything_ like these.” He turns another page. “ _Oh_ —a light purification spell—”

“Hm?”

“Where you capture a celestial-sourced light and imbue it with purification magicks, so that it becomes a ward to evil spirits—usually, we use wood-fire, because that’s easier to tether down; the stars are a thing of their own—”

Kurogane’s mouth curls through another hum. His lashes slip shut, for a moment; blink open again.

“Am I that _boring_?” Fai bemoans, turning further to send a glare upon the crease that strikes through one sharp cheek. “Goodness _me_ —I see what I’m good for—”

“Drink your tea,” grouses Kurogane, and grins. “You talk too much.”

“And you barely talk at _all_ — _someone_ has to say something, between us, or we’d be old conversation-less bats, already—”

Kurogane's fingers curl warm over his waist; smothers the words with a kiss, swallowing down any that would dare to babble further.

(Fai, naturally, forgets about the book, again.)

**Author's Note:**

> Someone once commented that Fai is just a surrogate for all our thirsty asses, and damn if truer words have never been said.


End file.
